Proxy Fight
by Random Guise
Summary: Crossover from the 2011 movie "Real Steel" and the Asimov "I, Robot" series of stories. Bailey, Charlie and Max have built a replacement for Atom but it doesn't go according to plan; time to bring in Dr. Susan Calvin to shed some light on the situation. I don't own these characters or a robot vacuum.


**A/N: A short one-shot to follow up the 2011 movie "Real Steel", although it falls into Asimov's Robot universe too thanks to a certain roboticist.**

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Proxy Fight

"Thank you for coming, Doctor" Bailey Tallet said to the newly arrived visitor inside her boxing gym. "This is probably going to be a wild goose chase, but I've exhausted all my ideas, like I told you on the phone."

Dr. Susan Calvin shook hands with the woman after sitting down a small case. "Maybe – or maybe not. Let me poke around a bit and see what we come up with; I like to think that there's a cause for everything if you just identify enough of the conditions. Is this the...oh wait, this isn't the bot at all! This is the mighty Atom, the little fighting engine that could." She marveled at the complex mechanics that went into a form that mimicked the movements of an athlete.

"Oh, did you see him fight?" Bailey asked, excitedly. His championship bout with Zeus had been one of the greatest moments of her life. Atom had lost in a split decision, but the fight had brought her, Max and Charlie together.

"Heavens no. I've never even seen a picture of him - it's just that he's got his name on the front there, you see. I wouldn't know one from another anymore than I could tell you the name of old Roman gladiators. I've never understood the destruction of anything useful; destroying ignorance is far more rewarding. However, in my field it's hard NOT to have heard of him. I've seen a few photos of him though; I don't know another of his series that still functions."

"Rrriiight" Bailey drew out. She wasn't sure if she was going to like this person or not. "But there's nothing wrong with Atom. No, the problem child is over in that corner" she said, pointing to the left. In a somewhat dark corner a robot sat with its legs folded, with no signs of power.

Calvin immediately focused her attention on the other robot and walked briskly toward it as Bailey hurried to catch up. This robot was painted in several different colors, and seemed to be somewhat larger than the Atom model. "Tell me again about him" she asked.

Bailey folded her arms as she began to describe the problem. "Well, we - myself and Charlie and Max Kenton - decided we wanted to retire Atom after his big fight against Zeus. But rather than sell him, we tried to use him as a template for the next fighter. We still used the G-2 sparring model, but a slightly newer version they tried that still had the shadow function."

"Right; a function installed to allow a robot to learn by almost instantaneously repeating the movements of an exemplar, or model. It was thought that it would be easier to program a robot to perform tasks that way, but the idea was supplanted by the advent of better programming" Calvin said in way of understanding.

"So I've heard, but I've only encountered it in older fighting 'bots. But it still has its uses, so we wanted to have the capability. We wanted to see how close we could come to building a robot that could think and react like a real human fighter. We programmed it to not only learn from shadowing, but also to incorporate learning from historic fighting techniques. Max thought that we should let him learn on his own, so we plugged him into the library system to access books to use in strategy. After we got him trained and ready we took Buddy to the Zoo."

"Oh, so Buddy is his name" Calvin said as she walked around the robot. "Was he supposed to learn something from the animals at the zoo?" she asked, not quite understanding.

"Not a zoo zoo. It's a place called Shaefer's Zoo, an abandoned old zoo that is used as an outdoor fight arena that the rougher crowd use for an entertainment event. Atom fought there before, so we thought it would be a good place to try out Buddy. Kingpin, the guy that runs the place had a bot named Metro that we beat the first time; we figured he'd like a rematch. Buddy was still in Beta mode so we didn't bother making him very flashy; we just wanted to test out his programming."

"Oh course."

"We got the fight, and made it through the first round pretty even. Charlie had already experienced Kingpin's fighting style, and was waiting to see if Buddy would pick it up. Charlie was a great student of boxing and fighter himself, so he had a lot of experience to fall back on. So into the second round, Buddy begins to see the patterns too and adapts his style to take advantage of Metro's weaknesses. By the third round he's just pounding Metro" Bailey said, clenching her fists as she mimed several punching blows. Calvin noted the movement but said nothing. "Near the end he's got Metro pinned against the edge. Suddenly, he collapses onto the ground in the pose you see now and doesn't move. Metro manages to stumble upright and knock him on his back where he was counted out. When he still wouldn't move after the fight, we powered him down and hoisted him up into the truck to bring back here. And there he sits. I can't find anything beyond superficial damage."

Calvin made a few "umm hmm" sounds and asked for Buddy to be powered up. Bailey did, but apart from some whirs and clicks and some lights, there was no change. Calvin waved her hand in front of the head, clapped her hand behind it, and tried a few simple voice commands. "All sensory input check out?" she asked.

"Visual and audio inputs check out fine. We even opened the library access, but no data has flowed over it since the fight. It's like he's not home."

"Hmm. I don't suppose there are any recordings of the fight?"

"Sure; we wanted a record so that we could deconstruct the technique. But it shows the same thing."

"Maybe, but then again you might have missed something. I find in circumstances like this that often there is a problem associated with the three laws. Since the positronic brain is usually physically fine to begin with, it is the programming that is invariably the crux of the problem. May I see the recording please?"

Bailey led Calvin over to a monitor and flipped through a box of memory cards until she found the one she wanted. She inserted it into the side of the monitor and a menu appeared onscreen. She selected a file and played it. The screen came to life as a camera played back the fight in the Zoo. Calvin watched the fight uncomfortably, but her eyes flicked from point to point on the screen as she scanned the image. She watched the whole recording and then asked for it to be repeated. Bailey obliged, and did again when she asked to watch the later portion of the fight for a third time.

"I wish you had recorded sound" Calvin wistfully said.

"Sorry, it has sound; I just had it muted because of the noise" Bailey apologized.

"Play the last two rounds again with the sound, please." Bailey complied and played it again, although she made sure the sound was at a moderate level. The crunch of metal on metal and the chanting of the nearby crowd were a little jarring, but at the lower volume level didn't assault the ears of the two. The recording ended and Calvin sat in thought for some time with her eyes closed.

"Um, Dr. Calvin?" Bailey finally asked, wondering if perhaps her guest had fallen asleep.

"Oh, sorry" Calvin said somewhat embarrassed. "I got carried away in my thoughts there."

"Do you know what happened?"

"Not for sure, but I have an idea. I'd have to run some tests to be sure."

"I'll get your case so you can run the tests here."

"My case? Oh, that's just my clothes in there; the tests would have to be back at the lab. But I think they'll vindicate my diagnosis. You have an advanced robot."

"Excuse me?"

Calvin chuckled, but sobered quickly. "My little joke. Now, forgive me while I walk you through my thought process. Now remember the three laws of robotics:

_1\. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm._  
_2\. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law._  
_3\. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws._

Those laws are built into every brain; they're hardwired" Calvin explained. "A lower number law always takes precedence over a higher number."

"Right. That's for our safety."

"And it usually works. It also works for robot fighting, because the first law isn't an issue so we can order a robot to defend itself and the laws fall into place nicely. But I want you to close your eyes and play the recording of the last round again, and listen to what the crowd is saying right when Metro gets pinned."

Bailey started the recording again at the third round and then closed her eyes as she tried to concentrate on the crowd. She picked up the chant of 'Kill...kill...kill' in addition to some individual calls for Metro's destruction. The recording ended. "I heard a typically vicious crowd" she said.

"That's what I heard too; the fact you call it typical only strengthens my theory. Now play that same part again, but just look at Buddy's head; slow that portion down" Calvin suggested.

Once again, the video portion replayed. Right at the moment Metro got pinned, Bailey slowed down the recording. It took some time at slower speed, but as she watched she noticed for the first time that Buddy was looking _at the crowd_ right before he collapsed, not the opponent he was pummeling. As he fell down, it looked like he intentionally sat rather than just tipping over as if he had shut down suddenly. She turned from the monitor. "What does it mean?"

"I think...it means you have an enlightened robot, Miss Tallet. First, notice the position he is in; the Lotus position, or at least a robotic equivalent to it. Secondly, he obviously heard the crowd chanting for violence and destruction. And lastly, I suspect that you will find that he's been downloading philosophy as well as fighting history. Not only has he learned how to fight, but he's learned how to _not_ fight."

"I don't quite follow you."

"It might be your background; I think you said on the phone your father was a fighter too so you're probably not seeing it from the outside. But here's my theory: Buddy saw the bloodlust in the audience, and felt that it wasn't healthy to them - he must have picked up somewhere that violence for violence sake was harmful _emotionally_ for people. This took precedence over laws two and three that were in effect at the time. By his reasoning, to continue to be a part of a sport that promoted unnecessary violence - and the baser behavior of the audience - was harmful in a fashion to humans."

"Then why didn't he just stop fighting and forfeit the match?"

"Just to be put into another fight? Or, if you suspected what happened, to have his memory wiped so he could fight again? Neither of those would have been acceptable. He was built to fight in a sport that he couldn't possibly participate in any longer. At that point he burned himself out rather than promote any future crowd reactions."

"Are you saying fighting is wrong?"

"Don't misunderstand me, Miss Tallet. I abhor watching any physical fighting and variations thereof simply for sport; particularly in this sport, where from what I understand you don't go for the points but for the kill. But, as long as no one gets hurt I have no problems with others doing it. Whether or not this desire to see creatures destroy each other is hurtful in a broader sense, I leave such things up to others. I'm just here to find out what happened to Buddy. I do have a suggestion, though."

"Yes?"

"If you build another robot that you insist on training to fight, make sure he isn't capable of becoming enlightened; you won't get a pacifist out in the ring very long. We'll arrange to send someone back to pick up Buddy for those lab tests" Calvin said as she patted the still form of Buddy before she walked to her case and picked it up. "When it comes to battle, I've always preferred a good game of chess" she concluded before bidding Bailey goodbye and exiting through the front door.

The End

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**A/N: I saw the last part of this movie while in a noisy laundromat several years ago, and just managed to watch the rest of the movie recently. I can't say I really liked the characters of Max and Charlie to start with, and they only became tolerable in the last thirty minutes of the movie. But as I watched the crowd give the "kill" yell during a scene, this idea came to mind and Dr. Susan Calvin was the perfect expert to point it out.**


End file.
